Commence Oblivion

Grand juries are rogue entities without oversight of any kind who can swoop in and detain anyone under arbitrary secret surveillance state dicta, without much if any cause, as Manning, Snowden, Assange, Greenwald, Poitras, Potter, et al. have risked their lives and safety, gone to prison and into exile to inform and warn us about. Grand juries symbolize everything about the (surveillance) state (and beyond) we should stand united against. So, stand united against them with us.

When Monday evening the top trending social media topic was "Planned Parenthood Not Indicted About Selling Fetal Tissue, but Two Activists Are Indicted for Producing Fake Anti-Choice Videos" or whatever the SEO gods named the thing that everyone was momentarily paying rapt attention to, a wave of nausea and disgust passed over me. I've heard the horror stories about grand juries: the obfuscation, the complete ruination of lives and livelihoods and personages, the Red and Green Scare chilling effect tactics, the prosecutorial puppetry. Remaining improbably still slightly naive about the General State of Things - here referring to knowledge about grand juries - I was even shocked to see the shibboleths of the liberal anti-forced birth leadership praising the plot twist in the narrative of abortion rhetoric, which let's face it, is not news to BAMF readers, anti-natalists, leftists, among others who can see a scripted story playing out like a fifth grade rendition of "Our Town." Yet somehow I was sickened. Somehow the cynicism has not yet seeped to the very marrow of my bones. Stupid lingering remnants of romantic cautious optimism. How dare I assume that comrades, feminist associates, fellow repro-opponents, like-minded uterine autonomists, and other uncharacterizable (I'm not generally an apt applier of labels) sympathizers would recognize this disgusting and thinly veiled ploy to gain public approval for grand juries by rallying support around their heroic indictment of what are undoubtedly unscrupulous and disgusting individuals preventing women from accessing health care they need to remove toxic parasites from their bodies? What is wrong with me? And, more relevantly here, with you?

Do not glorify grand juries. If you do, you're doing feminism wrong. You're doing communism wrong. You're doing Marxism wrong. You're doing anarchism wrong. You're doing Leftism wrong. You're doing things generally wrong. If you support grand juries under any circumstance, you might be a liberal. You also might be a conservative. You also might be a capitalist. Whatever you identify as or actually are, you're wrong. So please for the love of the hate of the state, stop. Just stop. And renounce your support. Post this. Post a bunch of links I'll include despite BAMF's new approach that does not require submissions to have credible citations and reliable research, be bogged down with Marxian terminology, or include trendy whatever-is-in-style-at-time-of-posting rhetorical strategies. I'm running on instincts here, taking a cue from Salvage. The screeds have commenced.

Presumably, everyone reading this can google. If not, I'm not an Expert but I can and have googled for you. I have personally seen it transpire. I have read innumerable accounts of grand juries ruining lives. I have no other pressing reason to butt up against the organizations with the most funding and public support to continue to provide safe, free/affordable (in some cases) abortions while fighting legislative battles to keep it that way. At this juncture, my reason for harshly criticizing the response of Planned Parenthood, NARAL, National Network of Abortion Funds, and countless others praising the use of grand juries in favor of their cause(s) is because my devotion to smashing the state and communism trumps my need to blindly support abortion providers' and their financial backers' political stances.

Commence Wolfe

One of the most fundamental differences between liberals and Marxists is the way they conceive of the state. For the liberal, the state is a fundamentally beneficent entity—an expression of a social contract between equals, existing for the good of us all, legitimated by the consent of the governed. If the state is failing to act for the common benefit, acting in an oppressive way, they see these actions as uncharacteristic, as deformations. The problem, they say, is we have failed to get the right people in charge, perhaps due to the pernicious influence of big money or, more often, a barely disguised disgust at the fact that ignorant white trash rednecks are still allowed the franchise.

This view leads to a tendency to think that the problem is not with the existence of grand juries but that they have become perverted by prosecutorial bad apples, that the problem is not with the modern surveillance state, but with the people doing the surveilling, that the problem is not with drone assassinations, but with those whose fingers are on the buttons.

Since the state so often fails to live up to liberal expectations, they must tell themselves stories. One story is that we have Fallen from the wisdom embedded in the Constitution, and if we returned to these principles—principles contrived by and for wealthy slave owners—then things would once again be set aright. Another popular story looks back to a more recent “golden age.” They tell us of the wonders of the great F.D.R., who put our nation on the correct course. F.D.R., the East Coast patrician, was a veritable Fredrick the Great who through his enlightened ideas and out of the goodness of his wealthy heart realized the true role of government and showered the working class with benefits. Then came the dark times and Reagan the Usurper...

Those with a Marxist outlook ought know better. The state, for Marx, has always been an instrument by which one class secures its rule over others. It does not act on the behalf of all equally, but on behalf of those whose rule it exists to secure. Any benefits offered to other classes are but instruments for this end. The “social contract” is a convenient fiction, cooked up to justify this. The influence of big money on government under capitalism is not a distortion of the system but of its essence. Given all of this, the state is by nature in the business of repression.

However, too many people who otherwise realize this remain within the spell of the myth of the beneficent state. They cheer when it scores a victory for “their side.” This tendency must be fought. The bourgeois state does not work for us. Occasionally it will, for reasons of its own, haul some dishonest right-wing propagandists up on charges. But when it does something like this it pays to bear in mind that pro-forced birth activists pose no danger whatsoever to capitalist rule, and that left wing activists and environmentalists do.

Oblivion for the Conclusion

May I reiterate my disappointment? Geez, people, really? No one stopped to consider the implications of this uncritical praise for and gushing over a grand jury? Have we forgotten the very recentTamir Rice no vote? Have we forgotten the historical persecution of communists? And anarchists? Have we forgotten the indefinite detention of and terrorism charges brought against animal rights and earth liberation activists? Tune in, folks. You're next. Once you endorse this, you've always already signed an agreement written in invisible ink, agreed to comply, encouraged more persecution of activists of all stripes. And a lot of others' are next as well. Don't make everyone a bed you don't want to lie in yourself.

Notes from Oblivion:

• This post is the first formal collaboration between me and John Wolfe, as well as the (I believe) second attempt to switch up the structural and stylistic approach to BAMF. Let us know your thoughts about the collaboration, the switch up, and the content.

• Some of the following articles are flawed in various ways, but their validity and relevance remains intact. Grand juries are dangerous, secretive, and CAN AND WILL pull yo' ass up on charges out of the blue. They must be abolished. Get on board. Now.

Monday, January 18, 2016

When does the student loan debt strike start?

I asked that question a few short hours or long minutes ago. For some it has already begun. There are anecdotal claims that a third of student loans are currently in default; other sources say 17%, or 7 million. There must be an equation that the feds and private loan sharks have devised to calculate risks, costs, and recovery rates. Here are some tedious definitions, statistics, and forecasts for those who choose to wade through them. Numerous people involved in ForgiveStudentLoanDebt.com (now apparently called StudentDebtCrisis.org) claim to have withheld payment from 5 to more than 20 years. Vice is perpetuating the idea that moving abroad - seemingly to Europe then perhaps to South America - and defaulting on loans is a relatively safe bet and good idea because the loan sharks are focusing on deploying collection agencies on defaulters in the US, who they can more easily track and efficiently penalize. Arguments have been made that countries who refuse to allow US student loan collection entities to harass their residents would gain well-educated, spirited US ex-pats who would enrich their culture.

While the keyboard is hot and the mind is sharp, "I want to live on the abstract plane" and take an aerial view. Perhaps an economist like Doug Henwood or Richard D. Wolff will give us some market-based insights later. For now, I'll tell you intuitively what I think could happen. If 1/3 of student loans are indeed currently in default, then 2/3 are being paid regularly, irregularly, are in deferment, are in forbearance, or are in some other state-sanctioned state of flux that excludes them as being classified as in default. If .5-1/3 of the 2/3 of ostensibly non-defaulted student debtors actively making payments were to suddenly, simultaneously halt student loan payments for 6 to 12 months, it would prompt at least some concessions to our collective demands and at best a collapse of what everyone knows and recognizes as the latest version of the housing bubble and another formation of the dot-com bubble. We know this; we watched it happen. Investments were made, the returns were much lower than expected, growth stopped or declined, the market crashed, the bubbles burst (why such a happy image of bubbles for such a ruinous phenomena?). Fine. The market fails. But it didn't crash and burn. And we didn't get any concessions. Why? No demands. Why? A lack of organized strategy around foreclosures, bankruptcies, and the stalling/failing/sinking of startups.

Starting-Gunners

There are a bunch of "immediate defaulters" (i.e. "starting-gunners") for lack of a more precise, less connotatively pejorative term. Immediate defaulters are likely already factored into the equation that the loan sharks have inevitably always already constructed. That means the interest rates, punitive repercussions, and other strategies to force payment from statistically "reliable" debtors are already built into the system. Interest rates may be higher to compensate loan sharks for what they bet on losing from their profit margins to immediate defaulters. Penalties for defaulting once you start paying, such as garnishment of wages and seizing of homes; ruining of credit lines necessary to buy homes; paying for medical care; and affording transportation in areas where public transit infrastructure is so disjointed and underfunded that having, maintaining, insuring, registering, licensing, fueling, and storing a car is the most efficient/only practical means of going places to earn money to pay for the education that allowed you to be considered for a job to begin with, as well as to the places you spend money because you need goods and services, are more directly threatening than those to the starting-gunners who've never paid at all. Personally, I owe more than $150k in student loan debt, primarily due to borrowing as an uninformed and displaced teen, subsequently as an uninformed, disillusioned 19- to 21-year-old MA student, and finally as a slightly informed, defiant twenty-something PhD student.

My presumptions about (premeditated, conscious) immediate defaulters (I always assumed I'd be one, and I only know three well) run along the lines of: Merchants who have already paid off their business loans and don't report their earnings accurately to the Tax Man who doesn't look too closely at the perpetuator of the US myth of the hardworking, successful, albeit a bit rebellious, independent entrepreneur; wealthy people who hide behind smokescreens of marriage, attorneys, reproductive expenses, and other state institutions because they continue to reproduce the Center, the labor force, the nuclear family; the working class who are accustomed to hiding from the government's attempts to garnish their wages and seize their personal property and even their bodies; the working class who are incapable of navigating the labyrinthine process required to establish an accepted payment plan to keep the wolves from the door and can't afford an attorney or are not wired to pursue and engage with bureaucracy; craftspeople, artisans, artists, and small merchants who sell things in online stores and local markets and street fairs and don't report the income; and those who simply don't care about consequences or aren't aware of exactly how dire they could be (we might say they have nothing to lose but their chains, but I'll not wax idealistic at this hour.).

These cowboys, these cavalier people who haven't paid a dime in ages/ever are to be admired. By me, anyway. I've paid thousands and the loan balance never decreases. You know why. Interest rates. Economic curves. Income-based repayment. You're out of a job precarious person? Ah, well, we won't evict you, steal your unemployment check, and take your car, but we will capitalize the interest that accrued while you used one of the (is it still three?) trump cards of failure that you're allowed as a student loan debt slave. In fact, use all of those cards because then the threats become imminent. You're educated, you have what we know you think we think is earning/producing potential, and you have what we know you think we think is an ethical and moral obligation to pay back money you borrowed from us, you hippie. Why were you taking out loans at age 16 anyway, dropout loser? (That's Doctor Dropout Loser, to you.) It's a credible threat because we assume you're well-traveled and well-read, that you want to maintain your US citizenship and probably live here, and if not here then in a Western or Eurocentric nation with which we have a robust collections agreement. By the way, despite Vice's often tenuous claims, the last time I checked a few years ago, the only place student loan debt collectors cannot follow one is to Cuba (probably on its way off the list if it has not already conceded to US interests, pun intended), Iran, and North Korea. Pretty bleak options any way you slice it, even for my Maoist readers and comrades.

But these cowboys are not alleviating any problems. Renegades are badasses. I love them. One of the top 10 most memorable things anyone has ever said to me was, "Okay, but where are you going to meet another partner who supports the FARC?" Though the nuance of my position was lost on them - as my nuances and all nuances so frequently are lost - the underlying implication of their point is valid. Renegades, rebels, radical fronts, and spontaneous disrupters are badasses. They lay it all on the line. That is admirable, something I wish I were more like. But here are the 2/3 of us, paying our monthly alimony to the spouse we supported for so long that we must now pay to sustain the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed and paying child support if we had someone we value co-sign, like our elderly parents, our established older siblings, our recently deceased grandparents, et al., or we'll lose custody. Luckily I declined the co-signing option, and unluckily they were throwing tens of thousands of dollars at me per semester. TENS OF THOUSANDS PER SEMESTER. In the US, a semester is something like four months. Then there are the couple of summer terms. So I could have gotten $30k for the fall and spring semesters, plus more for summer terms, at any given time. Often I did opt for the maximum amount. When I started college part-time at 14, I paid tuition with money from my fast food job. Once enrolled full-time at 17, I worked a lot and took mid-range loans (say $8k a semester, probably $4k all summer) and lived with roommates. But the further I went down the academic path, the more serious debt sums I racked up.

The Rest of Us

Then there are those of us who intend to pay, have paid what and when we can, and are able to nimbly navigate nightmarish bureaucratic mazes to enroll in state-sanctioned payment plans as the loan sharks sponge all of our expendable income. It seems we're on our own, but we are many, we are everywhere, we are millions. And this is not to dismiss offhand the courage/ignorance/lack of bureaucratic navigation skills of immediate defaulters. It is to simply state that some of us are wired to Follow the Rules and read tedious wording, qualifications, options, caveats and legalese, which has (as much as I hate to give the Obama administration credit for anything but war crimes and bolstering of the surveillance state) become more manageable for the economic layperson. It's markedly easier to identify, compare, and select from several limited but at long last comprehensible repayment options.

Communists think collectively. How can we movement build? How can we alleviate suffering? How can we unify as a class? Even while people in other places under other conditions may be suffering more intensely and in different ways, there is always a fight within our own ring, there is always someone to get on the ropes, there is always a stand to take. And this one looks ripe for the taking. Let's assume the cowboy renegades are not having any of our silly ideas about mass movements, unity of struggle, and other people's problems. We'll be dismissed as some kind of privileged opportunists and petit bourgeois whiners by our liberal social justice acquaintances and leftcom and third-worldists comrades, respectively. We should be grateful we even got to go to college, the first might say. Our futile attempts to jab capital's jaw is an impotent waste of time and energy, the second might say. There is only one class that can start the Thing that ends the Thing that causes suffering, the third might say. Then again, I don't know what anyone will say. Nor do I particularly care. I'm playing fast and loose with my BAMF style, structure, and typical approach right now because I want to get this message to you now.

Don't look to the starting-gunners, don't place your bets on government loan forgiveness under Bernie or anyone else. Look to the millions of people around you who are in eerily similar situations revolving around this singular present-day matter that is so deeply entwined with the financial sector and the state. Ask them how they feel about and what they would do to overturn student loan debt. Look inside and ask yourself what you're honestly willing to actually do about it. What are our demands? The US is begging for a general student loan debt strike (perhaps a general debt strike). You think about it, I'll sleep on it, and always feel free to comment below with your thoughts. Let's see what kind of organizational strategies can be deployed/would work the most effectively to achieve such a feat, for we need a mass movement to tackle such a massive plague. No amount of restless late night thinking and keyboard clacking from me can replace that.

Saturday, January 9, 2016

All Apologies, Again.

Many apologies to BAMF readers. Both of our current contributors are working on long-form pieces that make consistently generating content in a timely fashion for BAMF challenging. Your favorite contributor, Dr. John Wolfe, is working on a theoretical book that I'm not authorized to disclose much about here while teaching Marxism to our potential future comrades. I recently finished my first novel and irresistible internal and external pleas and demands to edit it and send it out into the world to find its place call day and night. Now allow me to proceed. Oh, wait, one more preamble. We've established that the terms used in abortion rhetoric are outdated and ineffective, and, yes, I am painstakingly working toward an entirely new, updated, rhetorically effective lexicon, as previously proposed. Let's try a few terms and phrases on for size to see how they suit us. Feedback about the various terms and phrases employed is more than welcomed; it is solicited and appreciated. Please comment below on any of the many I throw around, as I flail and struggle to develop more useful, relevant terminology to describe precise and nuanced positions and procedures, thereby destroying the gossamer that obscures the actual function of abortion in our society* - which is not to punish some whore for having sex by forcing her to reproduce - but which is to terminate life-endangering parasites in a safe manner at the discretion of the host. This is a social good, as any leftist and/or logician knows. Okay, let's go.

Abortion rights activism is the most dangerous kind of activism.**

This said, there must be a distinction made here, early, between Being (Perceived As)/(Identifying As) Something - such as a gender, an ethnicity, a race, a threat, a nationality, a follower of a religion, an adherent to a political ideology - and Being Someone Attempting To Protect Someone/Something Who/That Is/Are (Perceivied/Identify As) Something. Do not mistake the point: Being a black man, wearing a burka, following Islam, being LGBTQ, being a woman, being a child, existing as an abortion clinic, and providing abortion in the US*** is more dangerous than attempting to protect such intensely persecuted groups/things. So, there are those who are in danger, are discriminated against, are casuallymurdered at a frighteningly accelerating rate, are stalked, harassed, kidnapped, held captive, coerced, raped, tortured; and there are those of us who notice, become aware of, and become passionate about creating and/or guarding a safe place for the persecuted to exist, deterring and confronting threats of encroachment upon these entities' being, existence, and presence. Here we will focus on the dangers of Being Someone Attempting To Protect Someone/Something Who/That Is/Are (Perceivied/Identify As) Something. While there is plenty of evidence to support the claim that pro-abortion activism is the most dangerous type of activism, particularly in this relatively new age of surveillance,***** which seems to have lead to heightened suspicion, fear, propaganda, and video evidence of the spectacle of violence and pain that we watch seemingly on loop, building callousness and numbing our empathy toward those being beaten, kicked, dragged down a street, shot dozens of times, immobile bodies lying around as mundane as chairs around a kitchen table. You've read and/or heard about the latest (and historical) atrocities against women and against abortion providers (because how could you not have?). I have faith in you, dear reader, comrade reader, under-informed reader, male reader, misogynist reader, Reddit brocialist reader, liberal reader, overeducated underpaid academic reader, and all the rest. You know, if not exactly then at very least generally, what's happening to those some of us try to protect. The information about these incidents surround us, permeating the culture we cannot escape, everything we see, hear, read, absorb always already contains it.The vested interests that protect the control of women's reproductive choices and bodily autonomy (as well as that of nonhuman animals, which we ought to revisit another time) are the powerhouses of capitalism. They rule the world. The military needs disposable bodies to exploit. The tech world needs disposable bodies to exploit. The fast food industry needs disposable bodies to exploit. The Church, all sects of Christianity, and all other religions need disposable bodies to exploit. The propaganda disseminated by these mega ideological superstructures is unparalleled - excluding that of the meat, dairy, and egg lobbies, which is older by 25 years or so and therefore may have a little more pull if the two were ever to bump heads, but luckily for both the contradictions between them are obscured and indeed absolutely integral to the perpetuation of capitalism as we know it in the West because they all rely on exploitation of others' reproductive systems, forced gestation and natalism, and disposable bodies capable of perpetuating the cycle, i.e. viable female reproductive systems.

The requirements to oppose uterine autonomy for women are minimal. Christian. Muslim. Parent. Man. Woman. Humanist. Child. Woman who has had an abortion. Person who wanted to coerce a woman to gestate and reproduce their own genetic material but she terminated the dangerous parasite. Person who wanted to force a woman to gestate and reproduce someone else's DNA but she chose uterine autonomy instead. The statistically nonexistent woman who has had an abortion and regretted it for various nuanced reasons, apparently often tied to how "planned" the menstrual interruption was. A woman who wanted to gestate and reproduce but subverted the life-endangering reproductive condition due to any number of circumstances. In short, the criteria to be ideologically pro-forced gestation and pro-forced reproduction are very few. Interestingly, not alternately but additionally, the requirements to be a danger to repropponents/repro-opponents are only slightly more stringent. The differentiating factors here seem to be:1.) An unquestioning, unwavering belief that embryos and fetuses are equal to a reproductively capable woman based on some esoteric value scale (probably and usually based in the teachings of Christianity but not necessarily actually addressed in any version of the text on which their claims are ostensibly based) and, therefore, the subversion of a nonconsensual germination is equal in moral Wrongness to murder,2.) An extreme sense of entitlement to impose those beliefs by any means necessary on anyone perceived to be defying them, often embodied by a small-town sheriff mentality with an inner dialogue similar to "Welp, if no one else is going to handle this blight on our reputable little town, then I'll saddle up my horse, ride in and shoot those bandits myself," and

3.) A lack of fear of consequences. As we've seen numerous times, even as a pro-coerced natalism terrorist is cuffed and taken into police custody (never shot because he's always already a white man), he shouts, "I did it for the babies!" or some similar illogical claim, uncertainty of his actual motivessomehow remains, manifesting in media coverage and widespread cultural sentiment. He is labeled mentally ill, an extremist, a loose cannon, an anomaly, a rare exception to the myth of the passive, silent supporters of nonconsensual hostism, when in actuality the passive, hidden supporters of forced hostism create and enforce the ideological conditions under which he is able to carry out these deadly deeds and meet these three criteria. This self-styled small town sheriff cleaning up the bordello whores who must be forced into natalism to rectify their engagement in sexual intercourse only has the three elements that distinguish him from the pack of passive pro-forced birthers thanks to the passive supporters themselves. The ones who donate to the innumerable pro-forced insemination organizations; write articles and books on the evil of anti-natalism; silently pray in self-righteous groups outside of clinics alongside bullies who shout at and stalk pro-uterine autonomists (and who are prone to turn into terrorists) without ever reprimanding or questioning their aggressive tactics; give pro-forced reproduction speeches at churches; distribute anti-uterine autonomy propaganda; and utter negative, inevitably slut-shaming words about a woman who removed herself from a toxic reproductive situation. These are the ones who build, maintain, and encourage the conditions for the terrorist to develop the three necessary elements that set him apart from the gentle lamb of God innocents. Meanwhile, many of them (sometimes not so) secretly praise him and consider him a lifesaving hero. Scott Roeder is a hero to them, and I'm willing to bet something of value to you his commissary comes in as quickly and thickly as George Zimmerman's bail money and support fund did. Why fear consequences when there is a (sometimes not so) silent army of supporters out there ready to watch your horse gallop away to boldly battle a grave evil that could turn our hellbound world around and set it on the Right track?

What's at Stake

Anyone who dares defy the unending threats are targets in constant danger. Our spouses, children, homes, vehicles, employment, personal information (as far as that exists in this Surveillance Age), and our very lives themselves are perpetually in imminent danger, and we have no way to predict when an attack might happen. As though the ever-present pro-forced birth ideology that permeates all aspects of our culture weren't an effective enough threat, the Internet has made the stalking and murder of interrupters of reproductive labor far easier than in days of yore, or even since the advent of social media. This causes providers to flee from state to state to protect their ability to help women obtain critical and safe medial termination of unwanted parasites, to guard their loved ones, to save their own lives. Clinicians are often bullied and intimidated into quitting jobs, making their lives and livelihoods precarious, as well as causing high turnover at clinics, one of Operation Rescue's stated goals since at least 2004, disrupting the availability of anti-germination services women need. Clinic escorts - volunteer or compensated - are frequently frightened out of helping comfort and protect patients after encountering one of the many threats. So while seemingly scripted and staged legislative battles over defunding major non-natalist and women's healthcare providers and other skirmishes over rules, buffer zones, age limits, waiting periods, and so on might seem important and interesting intellectually, abstractly, from afar, the Real Battle is in the trenches. And every Leftist should be involved in this trench warfare, presuming solidarity is still one of our core shared values, something I deeply hope we all deem necessary for any kind of movement toward communism. Notes:* There are likely other functions of abortion in our society, which seem worth examining another time. **There are two probable exceptions to this claim: Animal rights activism and environmental activism. This is due to the nature of governmental infiltration and surveillance of those two aforementioned types of activist circles, a phenomena non-natalists have yet to systemically experience (that we know of). Small town police harassment and other such diffuse, annoying, largely uncoordinated efforts often impede anti-natalists' work, but any comparison between that and the intense scrutiny and demonization faced by animal rights and environmental activists, respectively would be inaccurate. Here are some links if you need proof: http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/about/https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2008/june/ecoterror_063008http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/24/schuster.column/index.html*** It should always already be assumed that this post (and blog in general) focuses on conditions in the US, the place with which I am most familiar and within which I am most aware of the dangers, biases, daily life, and other nuances that even as a citizen of the world, a traveler, and a reader, I cannot speak as accurately about.**** A historically unprecedented surveillance of women, as revealed here***** We are not presently addressing the common (liberal) cop-out of "exceptions for rape and incest" that exhibits an absence of critical thought with which were are sickeningly overfamiliar. BAMF should address that at some point. A somewhat of sad/ironic/meta sidenote on this post: There is a two to three paragraph narrative-style section missing from the middle that concretely describes exact circumstances and encountered tangible threats, as well as the consequences and outcomes thereof. However, due to the topic of the post I removed it because it could possibly reveal "too much," thereby endangering myself and others, our livelihoods, our very lives. J. Wolfe said, "It is less strong in the sense that the personal narrative gave the piece greater rhetorical weight. The argument is, I think, not affected." That comforted me to an extent, and I hope he is correct. Perhaps this sidenote bolsters any "rhetorical weight" that may have been lost due to the omission.